Friday, 9 May 2008

The media carried several reports over the weekend of DUP MPs musing about a hung Parliament in which they have the balance of power. They obviously were so busy attending to MLA or MP or Ministerial business that they missed the local election results in England and Wales.Perhaps even more bizarre was the claim in Financial Times that the DUP extracted the agreement that the Executive could keep all of the proceeds of extra assets sales in return for the DUP supporting Labour legislation on the 42 day detention of terrorist suspects.The Conservatives, keen to work to the old maxim that the best time to kick a man is when he is down, are said to be furious. Surely the DUP would not risk offending the Conservatives in return for a financial package that may not, given the economic climate, be worth anything much at all? With the Conservatives increasingly ascent in the polls this would seem like a short sighted position for the DUP to adopt.